The Contact Center

Hi everybody, welcome back! And congratulations if you find yourself here - that means that you are selling customer service, which is really exciting. It's my favorite thing, but what they're doing, they're telling you take this product that we call Pega customer service and go find a contact center, because that's where the people live that you're going to be selling to. But some of you may be wondering what exactly is a contact center, and I want to put your mind at ease.

It's actually nothing earth shattering or too complicated. A contact center is really just a centralized area where all the interactions from a business's customers come into, and so we call it a contact center because these may be calls. It may be your live chats, it may be monitoring what's happening on web self-service, and it may be looking at the health of your bots and what the stats are around that. What people are asking the bots? Or it may be back office support, processing emails and things like that, to interact with that business's customers.

So really, that's pretty short and simple, but I want to let you know that this comes in different manifestations. So, we are looking at a contact center on the screen.

However, they are also referred to as "call centers" as it suggests mainly those interactions that come in through the phone and they're working voice-to-voice contact. And like I said, that could be chat, could be digital, it could be IVR. It could be bots. It could be a handful of lots of things. And we're also seeing the vernacular start to change, where some organizations call it their "customer engagement center".

So don't be too concerned about the name, but really, this is where they manage those relationships with their customers. And as we go through this, it's important to understand that just because you don't find everybody sitting in one centralized area in one building, that doesn't mean that it's not a customer service opportunity, or a contact center or engagement center.

In fact, you'll often find times that a contact center could easily be 7 people sitting inside a marketing office, that are out there engaging. Maybe they're selling subscriptions. Maybe they're monitoring the health of social media and seeing what people are saying about the brand. They could also be in an auto dealer, believe it or not. People picking up the phone, triaging Technical Support, scheduling appointments for, you know, servicing and things like that.

So, there's lots of different types and flavors of contact centers out there, but it's important to note that as you go and you pursue a customer service opportunity, you're going to find primarily two different types of centers, not just the names, but types. And if we progress here, I will show you what that looks like.

So, we have something that's owned - its in-house. This is something that your organization physically owns. It's in the four walls of their infrastructure somewhere, and they have complete line of sight into that operation. Contact Center, Engagement Center.

And then there's another type, which we call business process outsourcing, or BPO. These are typically what contact center leaders such as myself would go out and they would leverage if we don't have a huge budget. If we don't, if we're very cost conscious, we want to be careful about how we spend those dollars. So, these are businesses that have the staff that are a contact center waiting for you to come and bring your business, and they'll provide the staff to answer the interactions, they will provide the technology more often than not, and there's lots of nuances there.

But let's first focus on the in-house, or the owned, that's going to be an easier sale for you as you pursue a customer service opportunity. Right, they have, like I said, direct line of sight and they have the buying power and they have the say so-of what happens. If you get in front of the business you'll find that your sale is expedited because it's all in-house. Now, of course, you'll still have to navigate the nuances inside that organization, but it's going to be a much more direct and easier conversation.

If we look at the BPOs, well that's a little bit different because typically they own the software and the businesses that come into them use their software. Now, there are instances inside the contract where maybe a business wants to use their own CRM or their own tools and they can bring that to them. It's all negotiated inside the contract, and because you've already got one industry in there, one business - then you have the BPO in there. Now you have two people that you have to navigate, and each has a separate interest, so these are going to be a little bit tougher. You're going to need a little bit more wherewithal to get through that sale.

But it's important to note that there definitely are two different types of contact center plays.

And, in a nutshell, that's what a contact center is, and those are the different types of contact centers.

Thank you.

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